Analogue Computing in Aeronautics

Abstract

I intend in this lecture to discuss tlie ways in which I think analogue computing can be of assistance to aeronautics in the future. I shall therefore be less concerned with how they are built, than with how they are used, and in fact, what circumstances justify using them at all. Up to a few years ago the only large computors were analogue ones, so the user had no choice, but when the automatic digital computor became established as a practical machine (and even before) there were many people to suggest that the analogue was obsolete. This view is now less widely held, even by makers and designers of digital machines, and reviews of aeronautical computing aids have usually found some place for the analogue computor, without establishing any general principles on which the choice has been made, except, perhaps, to suggest that the accuracy required is the criterion.I shall start by describing three of the types of computor most commonly used in aeronautics, the “ response simulator,” the “ electrolytic tank” and the “network analyser” and use these to illustrate the particular properties of analogue computing.